In a variety of clinical situations it is important to measure certain chemical characteristics of the patient's blood such as pH, hematocrit, the ion concentration of calcium, potassium, chloride, sodium, glucose, lactate, creatinine, creatine, urea, the partial pressure of O2, and CO2, and the like. These situations range from a routine visit of a patient in a physician's office to monitoring of a patient during open-heart surgery. The required speed, accuracy, and other performance characteristics vary with each situation.
Typically, electrochemical sensor systems which provide blood chemistry analysis are stand-alone machines or are adapted to be connected to an extracorporeal shunt or an ex vivo blood source such as a heart/lung machine used to sustain a patient during surgery. Thus, for example, small test samples of ex vivo blood can be diverted off-line from either the venous or arterial flow lines of a heart/lung machine directly to a chamber exposed to a bank of micro-electrodes which generate electrical signals proportional to chemical characteristics of the real time flowing blood sample.
Electrochemical sensor systems are analytical tools combining a chemical or biochemical recognition component (e.g., an enzyme) with a physical transducer such as a platinum electrode. The chemical or biochemical recognition component is capable of selectively interacting with an analyte of interest and of generating, directly or indirectly, an electrical signal through the transducer. Electrochemical sensor systems play an increasing role in solving analytical and clinical problems, and find applications in the field of medical diagnostics.
The selectivity of certain biochemical recognition components makes it possible to develop electrochemical sensors which can accurately detect certain biological analytes even in a complex analyte mixture such as whole blood. Despite the high degree of selectivity of certain biochemical recognition components, the selectivity of such sensors as a whole may nonetheless be compromised by the presence of certain biological interferents (e.g. ascorbic acid, uric acid, acetaminophen, cysteine, etc.) which can directly interact with the physical transducer if they are not prevented from doing so. Accuracy and precision of electrochemical sensor systems with biochemical recognition compounds is also compromised by residual levels of analyte remaining in the sensor from a prior sample affecting the analysis of the following sample.